Scary Cool (The Spellspinners)

by Diane Farr

  “I see no reason why she has to suffer,” said Rune. “As long as she doesn’t do anything big. We’re not trying to punish her. We’re trying to educate her.”

  I heard Pearl’s thought, as clear as a bell: And if that doesn’t work?

  Rune’s thought answered her. Even then, she doesn’t need to suffer. We’re not savages.

  They obviously didn’t know I could hear their thoughts. And, come to think of it, I shouldn’t have been able to. Unlike speaking aloud, a thought directed at one person is normally not detectable by anyone else. Were their minds accessible to me on some level because they were part of the binding spell?

  There was no time to think it through. Pearl had turned her attention back to me. “Very well,” she said. “I’m told you can do things without being taught, so let’s see if you can figure this one out.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. And then I remembered. She and Rune had been surprised that I was cold. So they must think I could fix that somehow.

  I frowned in puzzlement. I knew—from all the experiments I had done with Meg—that I couldn’t conjure things out of thin air. I couldn’t make a fur coat materialize, for example, or, better yet, a space heater that magically worked without electricity. So how—?

  “I suppose I could set the forest on fire,” I said. “If I really put my mind to it.”

  Neither one laughed, so I probably could.

  “That isn’t necessary,” said Pearl. “Which is rule number one for spellspinners, child. Aim for the minimum.”

  Okay. Aim for the minimum. I reached out just a tiny bit, to see what power might be accessible to me in my present, spellbound, state. I could not conjure, but I could change things…I thought about the problem, turning it this way and that in my mind. And, to my intense pleasure and relief, I picked up a faint pulse of power from the redwood tree at my back and was able to pull it along my skin, creating a thin film of warmth that immediately doused the chill and damp of Spellhaven on a September morning. All I needed was about a quarter of an inch, I realized. Maybe an eighth of an inch. Just a cushion of warm air, not discernible to anyone other than myself…

  I was so happy, concentrating on this newfound ability and playing with it, raising and lowering the temperature of the air that touched me, that it took me several seconds to remember I was being watched. I looked over at Rune and Pearl—a bit nervously—and saw their reaction. Rune seemed worried. Pearl, however, was rubbing her hands together with enthusiasm.

  “Remarkable!” she exclaimed.

  Dangerous, Rune thought.

  Pearl reached over and gave him a playful shove. “Party pooper.”

  Rune looked indignant, but Pearl stumped through the bracken to get a closer look at me. “Zara, you’re a natural,” she said. “My name’s Pearl Doyle. If you’d been born here in the proper way, I might have been your teacher.”

  “How do you do?” I said—hoping to sound polite. Because it seemed to me that her telling me her name was a positive development. Introductions are not, you know, normal between jailors and prisoners. “I’m Zara Norland, but I think you know that. I’d shake your hand if I could.”

  Pearl’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re a cool customer, I’ll give you that. Don’t you know you should be quaking in your boots?”

  I tried to smile. “I only wish I had boots to quake in.” I pointed my silver-spangled toe. “These aren’t very practical.”

  Pearl’s expression was unreadable. “Don’t worry. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “We brought you some breakfast,” said Rune. He pulled a little zipped bag out of his jacket pocket and tossed it to me—which indicated that he and Pearl couldn’t cross the invisible barrier any more than I could. It must be similar to the shell Lance and I built around Nonny’s property. My breakfast sailed through with no problem.

  I caught it and opened the bag. It contained an egg sandwich and a juice box. Bleah. “Thanks,” I said. “So the plan doesn’t include starving me?”

  Pearl chuckled. “It’s no easy feat to starve a spellspinner,” she said. “Hard to even torture us with it. We don’t feel hunger the way the sticks do. But everyone likes to eat, so—“

  “Think of it as a peace offering,” said Rune. “If you like.”

  I took a sip from my juice box. “I guess I didn’t realize we were at war.”

  Pearl’s smile held no warmth. “Well, that’s the beauty of a pre-emptive strike,” she said. “You take your enemy out before they know the war’s begun.”

  “You think I’m your enemy?” The weak, sweet liquid seemed to stick in my throat. “I don’t even know you.”

  “We’re about to fix that, Zara. You’re going to know us very well.”

  Chapter 15

  Pearl Doyle is 88 years old and the youngest member of the Council. There aren’t many Doyles left among the spellspinners—whose surnames seem to have been deliberately chosen at some point along the line, since they all have spellspinnery meanings. Donovan and Doyle have to do with darkness, dark warriors and dark strangers. Pearce and Carrick both mean ‘stone.’ Alston means ‘elf stone.’ I like that one. And it’s pretty obvious what Moon and Wilder mean.

  I guess I’m the only Norland. Not that that’s my real name. But we may never know my real name.

  There were once more names—and more spellspinners, for that matter. But after their Great War a few centuries ago, the spellspinners who hadn’t killed each other off formed a ruling Council and decreed that henceforth there would only be forty-nine of our kind allowed at a time. Which meant that bloodlines had to be carefully controlled. And some of the old names died out. But at least they weren’t killing each other anymore.

  As for me, days passed slowly in my tube cell—which is how I came to think of it, even though it wasn’t, strictly speaking, anything of the kind. It didn’t exist in any corporeal sense, but it sure felt like a cell to me. I was cold a good bit of the time, because it’s tiring to keep a warmth spell holding. Maybe if I’d had my power stone things would have been different, but the spell kept fading out on me—as usual. Whenever I fell asleep it immediately unraveled and I was half frozen in about five minutes. So even though I would have loved to sleep during the long, dark nights, when they left me alone for hours, I couldn’t.

  This wasn’t the same level of torture that it would have been for a stick, since spellspinners don’t actually need to sleep. But it was a cruelty, definitely. They could have brought me a sleeping bag. A pillow. A change of clothes. A jacket. By day three, my pride had broken to the point where I actually asked for these things—pleaded for them, not to put too fine a face on it. They brought me an army blanket. That was it.

  I tried not to wonder what might be different if I had my power stone. Could I keep warm without all this effort? Could I even break their binding spells? Sometimes I sensed that the spells weren’t really that strong. The ones holding me prisoner, I mean. But I didn’t dare test them. I didn’t dare think about testing them. I had to guard my thoughts at all times, because I couldn’t tell what the other spellspinners could read and what they couldn’t. I often heard their thoughts perfectly. At other times, I wasn’t sure what I was hearing and what I might be imagining. But until I knew for certain what they could pick up from me, I had to keep my mind wide open and guileless, as blank as a newborn babe’s.

  That was tiring too.

  I could tell they were almost as afraid of me as I was of them. Nobody ever came alone to see me, for example. They came in pairs. Usually it was Rune and Pearl, who tag-teamed each other to teach me spellspinner history and spellspinner customs and, to be perfectly frank, all the stuff I wished Lance had taught me last summer.

  I didn’t ask about Lance.

  I tried not to think about Lance.

  But he crept into my thoughts all the same, especially during the interminable stretches of time when I was left alone in my tube cell with nothing to do. Sometimes I thought I would go crazy, si
tting under that tree on the cold, hard ground, hugging my knees, trying not to think, and watching the woodland creatures doing their woodland thing. I sure learned a lot about blue jays.

  The forest was beautiful, but it didn’t take long to get heartily sick of it. By Day Four I would have crawled across broken glass to get to a cell phone. Or a bathtub. Or a grilled cheese sandwich.

  Or someone who loved me.

  It was hard—it was very hard—not to think of Nonny and Meg, but every time I did, despair grabbed me so hard that tears would come, no matter how furious I got with myself about it. Tears are like the stupidest things in the world. They solve nothing, they don’t make you feel better, and while you’re weeping and feeling sorry for yourself you’re not accomplishing squat.

  And if you happen to be locked in a tube cell in the forest, tears leave streaks on your dusty, dirty face and make you feel even grubbier than you already do. I tried to scrub at my face with my forearms, since my hands were filthy, and wipe the tears with the lining of Tres’s jacket, but I had the distinct impression that my captors always knew when I’d been crying. My face must’ve been a sight, but I didn’t have a mirror so there wasn’t much I could do to fix this. At first I used my powers, weakened as they were, to lift the worst of the dust off my skin and smooth the wrinkles in my dress. But it didn’t work very well, and as time went on the dirt became ingrained in the silk and it all became rather hopeless.

  Rune spent a lot of time with me. Pearl, despite her vivacious energy, tired easily and although I saw her a couple of times a day, she never stayed long. Amber came once, but Rune disliked keeping an eye on her as well as me—to prevent unauthorized violence, I imagine—so he told her not to come anymore. Some of the others didn’t bother to tell me their names. They just came to look at me, as if I were a museum exhibit. One odd-looking woman called Nedra had eyes just like mine. It gave me a jolt to look into her pale, sharp-featured face and see my own violet eyes looking back at me. It was a vivid reminder that these people are my kin.

  A depressing thought, since there wasn’t a friendly face among them.

  Rune’s was the closest to friendly. It didn’t take me long to realize that his conflicted emotions were part of the reason why he never saw me alone. Whichever spellspinner came with him to visit me kept an eye on Rune, making sure he didn’t grow attached to me.

  Pearl was sharp. Whenever she was around, I could feel her mind tapping at mine like Lance does, trying to find a way in. It was hard work to keep her shut out and concentrate on Rune’s lessons at the same time. I managed it only because it was important—both to keep her out and to hear the spellspinner legends and lore. If Pearl had been younger, it might have been impossible, but fortunately I wore her out. She was always a little testy with me by the time she packed it in, and no wonder. Must be tough to be old.

  One day she got disgusted and left earlier than usual, waving off Rune’s offer to escort her back to wherever she was coming from. “No, no,” she said crossly. “I can skatch if I get too tired. You stay here and finish your little story.”

  We watched her stump off through the bracken and down the path. “Story,” muttered Rune. I could see he was offended.

  I grinned. “It’s a good story,” I said. He’d been telling me about a warrior spellspinner named Zachariah way back when, who had singlehandedly taken, by force or cunning, all the power stones then in existence. This had weakened the other spellspinners so much that he basically is credited with finally ending the spellspinner wars and making the formation of the Council possible. “How much of it is true, do you reckon?”

  Rune’s lips twitched. “Most of it,” he said.

  “Not all?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Probably some bits are garbled, some bits are embellished, and other bits are missing entirely. That’s the thing about oral history. It muddies as time goes on and stories are retold, over and over.”

  I lay back on my folded army blanket, arms crossed behind my head, and stared up into the treetops. “Do you ever wish you could go back in time and see what really happened?”

  My heart had started to race. I forced myself to be calm. Blanked my mind. Blankblankblankblank. We were heading into dangerous territory now. Pearl was gone and I was jolly well going to take advantage.

  I didn’t dare let Rune guess the direction of my thoughts.

  So far, he didn’t seem suspicious. “Are you kidding?” I couldn’t look at him, but I heard him chuckle. “A history buff like me? I’d love it.”

  Blankblankblankblankblank … “Why don’t you go?” I asked. Oh, that was good. My voice sounded lazy. Almost sleepy. Just idle curiosity, I thought. Perfectly innocent question, I thought—willing Rune to believe that.

  “Because I can’t,” he answered promptly. “We can do a lot of things, but time travel isn’t one of them. Spellspinner powers are limited, Zara. We can alter the properties of—”

  I didn’t feel like hearing a lecture on alchemy, so I broke in with another question. “Have you ever tried?”

  He sighed. “Yep. Nothing happened. I knew nothing would happen, but I tried anyway. I was just a kid.”

  “Maybe you could do it now,” I suggested. “Our powers increase as we get older, right?”

  “Powers we have get stronger,” he said firmly. “We don’t suddenly acquire random powers. Sorry. I’d love to time travel, and probably so would you, but it’s not going to happen.”

  “My friend Meg says it’s possible. Unlikely, but possible. She told me Einstein said so.”

  “For sticks,” Rune said.

  Startled, I turned my head to look at him. “What?”

  “It’s possible for sticks,” he repeated. His expression was a mixture of rueful and glum. “We don’t know whether it’s ever been done, but yeah. We know for a fact that this planet is riddled with wormholes. An ungifted person could—in theory—stumble across one and get shot backward in time. Or forward, for that matter. But they don’t work for us.”

  I was so astonished, I sat up and stared at him. “There’s something they can do that we can’t?”

  He nodded. “It’s just one of those things, Zara. Bugs don’t bite us, the sun doesn’t burn us, and wormholes don’t pull us in. The sticks don’t even know where the time tunnels are, but we know at least a few locations. Thing is, when we go there, we can walk right through ‘em. We don’t get sucked in.”

  “But a stick would.” My brain was working feverishly. “Would they have to intend it, for that to happen? Or could it happen accidentally?”

  Rune shrugged. “Beats me. Why?”

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. “No reason. Just curious.”

  Blankblankblankblankblank.

  …

  That night, my army blanket wrapped around me like a cocoon, I must have fallen asleep—because I dreamed.

  I dreamed I had somehow climbed the redwood tree and was sitting on a branch high above the earth, clinging tightly as the tree rocked and swayed in the night wind. I knew I was in danger. I could fall to my death at any moment. But in my dream, a bright star overhead was watching over me, keeping me safe. As long as I held fast to the tree and kept my eyes on the star, I would not fall. The bark dug into my thighs and hurt my hands, but I hung on. Clouds scudded past the star, sometimes hiding it from me, and when that happened I was frightened. But every time the clouds broke the star was still there, shining down at me.

  I didn’t think about it in the dream, but after I woke up I realized there had been something odd about that star.

  It was peridot green.

  Chapter 16

  It was dangerous to ask Rune any more questions about time travel. I had to drop the subject. It nearly killed me to drop the subject. But, lord knows, I had plenty of other questions—things I couldn’t ask just anyone. And Rune was the closest thing I had to an ally.

  I couldn’t push him, for fear I would push him away. But I was constantly on the lookout for another chance to
talk privately with him.

  Two days passed before another chance came.

  Nedra was there this time, but she had brought along a camp stool and a Kindle and wasn’t paying attention to us at all. Rune was sitting on the ground, leaned back against a nearby tree, and I was facing him, sitting on my folded blanket, with Tres’s now-utterly-ruined jacket draped across my knees. It was midafternoon, and the closest Spellhaven gets to warm. Rune was in the midst of another tale about the Great War—spellspinner history seems to consist of a bunch of disconnected, heavily-embroidered legends, if you ask me—when I interrupted him.

  “Rune,” I said softly. “Why are you bothering to teach me all this stuff, if the Council is just going to destroy me in the end?”

  He stopped. Glanced back at Nedra. Then looked at me. His eyes were piercing; his expression troubled. “Well,” he said. “That’s not a done deal.”

  “But it’s likely.”

  I waited, hoping he would contradict me. Instead, he gave me a sad little smile. “There’s always hope.”

  I could tell there wasn’t much.

  I lowered my voice, hoping Nedra wouldn’t hear us. “You don’t want that to happen,” I said. I sounded more confident than I felt. “You don’t think it’s right. Help me.” I sensed his refusal forming and interrupted it. “I’m not asking you to go out on a limb for me. I know you’ll go with the Council, whatever they decide. I understand that. Just give me some advice. Tell me what to do. How can I convince them, Rune? What can I do, to make them see I’m not a threat?”

  His voice dropped, too—an encouraging sign, if it meant he also didn’t want Nedra to hear. “I’m doing my best to make you one of us,” he said. “If you appreciate who you are and where you came from, what you are a part of, maybe you can convince them to let you in. We’re not a warlike people anymore, Zara. We haven’t been, for a long time now. We’re out of practice—killing our own kind.”